A Sensitive Story

That girl is strange but special, a most peculiar mademoiselle…that’s a song quote, which any Disney or beauty and the beast fan could tell you is from a song called Belle. It’s the introduction song to a girl who was different from everyone else, and it’s the song that if you were to ask me, would be the one to best describe me. I was, and still am, someone different, and that’s not a bad thing.

In third grade I was diagnosed with sensory processing disorder, which I call sensory issues cause it’s much easier, I had a bit of other stuff too, but the sensory was the main thing. It was a challenge for my mom and I, we were dealing with a school at the time that didn’t want to listen to the documented explanation we had of my behavior, they didn’t want to help. So the occupational therapist I was seeing at the time told us to get out of the school, my mom did so and homeschooled me. I can not tell you just how much I needed that. It helped so much to be out of that school that hated me for being strange, and that kept attempting to send me to vista, a school for children who need to be “reformed”. My mom’s and I’s relationship had always been a thing of pure trust, she trusted my word more than the school’s about things I had allegedly done, because she knew I wouldn’t lie to her, and I wouldn’t. I learned from a very young age how important the truth was, especially between her and I.

Cue towards my middle school years, thing’s still weren’t easy by any means. I went through hard times, and harder times were still to come. Losing people was hard, and not just in death, but in friendship as well. I was in a constant up and down with friends, I wasn’t good at the social part of life, though I was good at making friends, keeping them was another story. I can still feel my heart break when I think about my best friend I had in elementary one day telling me she’d rather just be acquaintances, and I know it was because I was different, and I know now that she was going through stuff too, but it was heart wrenching at the time, when I didn’t know what was happening and my world was just crumbling around me. There are very few people who I claim as friends that have known me since elementary, but those few are important people to me, more than they could ever know.

That sense of rejection followed me into high school, and I was terrified of people my age that knew me and my past, or that talked to the people who knew me. To say it simply, I was bullied, a lot. Through middle, elementary, and I was lucky when it almost completely ceased in high school, though it still happened, I was getting a thicker skin, or trying to anyway. I still to this day have trouble thinking about all of it, I don’t like being rejected, no one does. I knew though that this couldn’t continue. I needed to change.

In my senior year of high school I decided to change things. I was a theatre kid, still am at heart, and I was in shows every year in high school. Of course, I didn’t have really many friends in it either though, I always felt ignored and it was partially my fault, it was my fear that really kept me from getting to a connecting point with the others. I stepped out onto the stage, senior year, during a dance camp that we always had, and I stopped and looked around at the people stretching, and I realized something. There were a lot of new people sitting on the stage, lots of freshman, some who’d just decided to start trying theatre, and there weren’t a whole lot of other seniors and people that I knew. I realized something at that point, that I was done being left behind just because I was too scared to move towards someone. I didn't want to be oh yeah that girl, she was weird. I wanted to be Belle? Oh yeah she was actually a really fun person. And I like to think that the few friends who did bother to get to know me do think that.

It wasn’t like it was a simple flip of the switch easy transition, and I know for a fact I’m still working on it, but it did change something immediately. I started realizing that I needed people more than I realized I did. I had for a long while thought meh you don’t need friends, you just need a family, and colleagues. People you cooperate with. I think it was because I’d been hurt by my friends over and over that this thought became such a mantra for me. But, during the end of senior year, I talked with a girl who’d I’d talked to before, we weren’t close in any way but we’d roomed together for a trip our freshman year and had had classes together so we knew who each other were anyways. Well I was so scared of her and everyone else during that trip that I clung to a few friends that I had. Problem with that was that everyone there knew how to ski, why is that a problem? well, I didn’t. And this was a choir trip to Colorado, for a skiing resort vacation thing. So, yeah. I didn’t like skiing the first day, so wasn’t going to bother with it again, but the second day that girl I was talking about before had no one to ski with on the small beginner slopes, so I got paired with her. I won’t deny I am a nicer person than I think I am, I do go out of my way sometimes to make other people happy. But I was TERRIFIED of hanging out with this person. I doubt I let on about that though, and we actually ended up having a very fun time together afterwards, which led later to an eventual friendship.

But there’s a reason I’m telling about her specifically, yes she’s a perfect example of someone who I let myself stop being afraid of and just start making a friend with, but more importantly is a conversation we held one of those nights about me, and what others thought of me. I didn’t know how much I actually needed this conversation. I’ve told my story a lot of times, but never like this. See, she told me that others had been passing around rumors about me, sadly some of them were true, but there was a reason behind their truths. Several of the things they were complaining about me with was because of my issues. As we talked I explained to her why things were the way they were for me, why I was different, she’d ask questions and I’d answer. It was the first time I’d really done this and felt like someone was really responding to me. It was the first time I told the story through a conversation, and not a speech. Surprisingly, I was super happy to hear those things that were said about me in the end, even if they kinda hurt at first, it was like a huge weight was lifted off of me. I’d always known people were saying things about me but I had never known what and I couldn’t explain what I didn’t know.

Honestly, that conversation helped lead me to where I am today. But before I get to the end of this video I have a few more things to say. First off, my hearts song. Now it might sound a little silly to some of y’all but this is super important to me. Music, is super important to me. Since I was little I’d make up songs and words for fun based off of my circumstances, and it’s kind of become a coping mechanism for me as well, singing really is my life. But there was a song I kept singing to myself in high school, (sing) that was what I sang to myself, I’d go up to a mirror and sing it to my reflection when I felt like I wasn’t enough. It wasn’t helpful to say the least. But, senior year when I changed my attitude from the beginning, I changed my song as well. I made a leading role in theatre, things were doing mostly well for me, I had limited complaints, and I decided one day that this song was silly, but I couldn’t let go of the tune, it’d pop into my head every now and then when I felt down. So one day I went to that same mirror in the same classroom in theatre I always sang, and changed the words. (sing) This was who I wanted to be. Not down, but up, not sad, but someone who would choose to be happy.

I want to be a light for the people who don’t understand people with issues like mine. For those who don’t quite understand what sensory issues are, or for anyone who has trouble seeing past others or themselves to find where issues are. For people who want to lay blame instead of accept that things don’t always work.

I want to be a hope for the caretakers and the parents of those like me, that have issues that seem to be just too much. I remember even today, my mother and I crying while we watched Temple Grandin’s movie, which if you haven’t seen you really should. We watched Temple’s mom go through the same thoughts that go through most mothers heads, the fears that my mom might’ve held back then, the feeling that it was her fault, when it wasn’t. I don’t want anyone to have to feel like giving up, even when it’s the hardest of times. Because there’s always another way out, sometimes you just have to search and wait and watch for God and his miracles.

An example for the people who are like me, or going through a similar or even harder things, to show that no matter what you can keep going. Even when you’ve got five hundred million thousand billion, that’s not a number, people telling you you can’t. Because I had that too. I had everyone, even the experts telling me, she won’t be able to drive, she probably won’t go to college, she may never fit in and be close to people. But I also had one or two people telling me the opposite of that. And look at me now. I’ve been driving for a few years now, I’ve gotten accepted to every college I’ve ever applied to and am now attending OU, and I’ve made a lot of friends, touched a lot of hearts, and people barely notice my oddities.

But how could that have happened with all those people telling me I couldn’t. It was all a choice, everything we do is a choice, and I decided to listen to the couple people telling me I could instead of focusing on what people said I couldn’t. Nobody is less than anyone else, nobody is more than anyone else. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, we’re all in the same boat with a paddle in hand ready to deal with all the waves of fear and hardships. But we have to work together or we capsize, we can’t survive without support, it’s too hard sometimes, and believe me I get that. But we have someone looking out and saying we can do it, and if you think you don’t then listen up because I’m saying you can.

Everyone has a story, it’s up to us to find those stories and listen to each other. When we do that, we create a willing community. Willing to put forth the effort to care for one another. Tell your story, find your story, and listen to others stories.